In computing systems, filter drivers are configured to intercept and manipulate input/output (I/O) messages and other communication between drivers, devices, operating systems, and possibly other programs or software entities. Each filter driver may be configured to intercept I/O messages and to cause a particular operation or operations to be performed therewith. The filters are positioned above or below other filters within a stack-like configuration. However, with existing systems, there is no declarative way for an application to specifically order the filter drivers. Rather, the driver stack for the associated device is evaluated at runtime by an operating system to determine the appropriate place for the filter driver to be inserted into the driver stack. The evaluation of the order of filter drivers within the driver stack often requires substantial knowledge or understanding of what other drivers, filter drivers, and/or other elements are present and may affect the I/O message before and/or after the filter driver to be inserted. Such existing installation schemes (e.g., via a separate executable installation program, etc.) consume processing and memory resources, affecting the performance of the device. Further, some existing mechanisms require explicit ordering and are dependent on knowledge of other surrounding filters, which leads to conflicts and awkward dependencies between different filter vendors.